Saturday, February 12, 2011

Conspiracy Theories Theories

Plan B established a committee whose members' names are not made public, supposedly to protect them from record-industry pressure. The group is allowed to overrule the membership's nominations for its four biggest awards: album of the year, record of the year, song of the year, and best new artist. They take out nominations that might embarrass the academy—one official has hinted that "Macarena" might otherwise have been nominated one year—and replace them with artists they think are more deserving or, more importantly, who will bring in more viewers to the TV show.

The author of the piece asserts variously that this committee works to select bland, boring, safe groups and also controversial, attention-grabbing groups—it’s the mark of a good conspiracy theory when you have conflicting, almost contradictory motives.

And I believe it too. The reason I believe it is that I have a theory of conspiracies: conspiracies only thrive and function if no one cares about their existence. No one cares about the Grammies; hence the conspiracy exists. Boom!